


your mouth is a wonder

by artsycat



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 23:00:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15568266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artsycat/pseuds/artsycat
Summary: Eren, Mikasa and the time they both have left.





	your mouth is a wonder

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to my fellow incest shipper hoes, and every other eremika shipper out there. This one's for you.

Mikasa knows that Eren is dying in the way that she knows that when waves crash against rocks, its salt fills the air. Distant. Harrowing. It is never easy, understanding death that is. Years later, and one might think Mikasa to be used to it, to accept it, but that could not be farther away from the truth.

Years pass and Mikasa has found a certain rage that hides beneath the skin of her wrist. She fears that if one may touch, the skin will burst, allowing molten, hot lava erupting from within.

“What are you thinking about?” Eren’s hoarse voice asks within the darkness. “Come here.”

She’s half-tempted to refuse him, but Mikasa has never been able to refuse Eren anything. Slowly, she climbs atop of the bed where he lays, and throws a hand over his bony and skeletal frame, as if protecting him. Shielding him.

Fat lot that will do now.

“You think too much.” Eren tells her. “You’re tensed. I can feel it.”

She tries not to be. Wills herself to relax, but how can she truly relax when at any point in time Eren could die? He’s half-close to death already, his face gaunt and skin sticking to bones. She’s scared to hold him any tighter; fears that he will shatter from her grip.

He used to be so much more than gangly limbs and sharp cheekbones, and now, he’s practically nothing. Is it wrong to say that she misses the old him? The him that used to be strong and powerful and angry with anger roaring throughout his entire being. At least then Eren had looked alive. At least then he felt alive.

“I don’t want to think too much.” Mikasa admits. “Distract me.”

“Jean visited today,” he informs her. “It was… sad. To see him like that, I mean. He used to be so much… more.”

Mikasa refuses to allow the sarcastic snort to escape and instead smooths her features down into a neutral manner. “We all used to be more than what we are now.”

“Still,” Eren insists. “it was sad. He seemed… it’s as if he still hasn’t let go of Armin’s death.”

Mikasa doesn’t know what to say to that. Truth is, Jean hasn’t been able to let go of Armin’s death, and in a way, that has eaten him up whole. He’s almost robotic now. Isolated and alone, he shelters himself away from the world they all have worked so hard to create. The peace they shed blood and lives for. For Jean, life had only mattered when Armin had been there with him.

Mikasa isn’t too sure on the specifics of what went on during the minutes prior to Armin’s death. She hadn’t been present at the time, but she hears the gist from Eren who tells her that Armin had made them promise to live their lives for him.

Mikasa thinks it cruel for Armin to do such a thing. To put Jean through such misery, such pain for the rest of his life - it’s unfathomable. Is it wrong of her to think that Jean would be happier dead? Jean had loved Armin in a way that she will never understand. A bond that Mikasa will never be able to comprehend.

He would be happier dead, Mikasa thinks to herself repeatedly. Mikasa knows she would if she had loved someone that passionately.

“He’ll get over it all eventually,” Mikasa says, deciding to lie. “We all will.”

“I haven’t.” Eren says. “I’m not over anything. I don’t think I ever will be.”

She bites her lip hard, tasting the iron of blood and using the pain to distract herself from her thoughts. “Death is a part of life. I think you and I have seen too much of it to still be horrified.”

Eren shrugs in her arms. “Maybe you’re right. Doesn’t make it any less sad.”

Mikasa says nothing. The silence is all too heavy and tense, and she waits for Eren to bring up the dreaded question, the one she’s been avoiding all these years after they found out that Eren only had a few more years left on this Earth. So, Mikasa thinks Eren will say, what will you do after I’m dead?

She doesn’t know. For so long she had denied Eren’s death as something that could happen. Reject it and move on as if it was just unpleasant news. She curses herself for dismissing Eren’s eventual passing so carelessly. And now, time has run up, and now, what will you do Mikasa?

“I don’t want to see grief like that on your face when I’m gone.” Eren says, so quiet that she thinks she must’ve imagined it. Softer, he adds, “I don’t want to see you like that.”

Mikasa can’t help the half laugh and half sob that escapes her throat. The dreaded question has come and now she wishes with all her might that she could go back to being fifteen and ignorant and thinking that there’s a way to find happiness within the walls.

But now, the walls are gone. All that remains of Maria, Rose and Sina are the phantom touches people have when they pass by their remains. The feeling of something important being there, the feeling of history.

“I don’t think I have the energy in myself to hold a grief like that,” Mikasa admits, wiping away tears. It’s true. The grief, the sadness, the misery, it’s all gone now.

She remembers Sasha’s death still. Years later and though the image is blurry, the emotions she had felt then are not. Horrified, Mikasa thinks. She had been horrified. And she had screamed. She doesn’t remember a time where she had ever screamed like that before.

She misses Sasha. She would’ve been happy in this new world of theirs. This world filled with food from all over the world. It is for Sasha’s sake that Mikasa never goes to bed hungry. Trying something different each day, and letting it sit in her belly. It’s amazing what freedom tastes like. It has different flavours each day.

Mikasa thinks that it is anger she will feel when Eren passes on. Blinded by rage, but even then she is not too sure. All she knows now is that she feels empty and heavy all at once.

“Good,” She hears Eren say. “Don’t… don’t wallow in grief. At least not for me.”

She grabs on to his shoulders, facing him towards her, and the anger she had felt then when she heard him say those words escape her tongue.

Her beloved is dying. And she is helpless to do anything about it.

“I won’t wallow in grief.” Mikasa promises.

“You can’t.” Eren agrees in a helpless whisper. “You won’t. If you do, I’ll haunt you forever.”

Mikasa gives a biting laugh at that, feeling the tears entering her corners. “I think you already do Eren. You always have.”

“Don’t say that,” He says. “Please.”

She’s torn between laughing and crying, and instead, settles on saying, “All I wanted was you. All I ever wanted, was you.”

He looks at her with a mixture of love and confusion and pain and it’s enough to make her heart break in a way that it has never been broken before. “I don’t deserve yo- “

“You deserved a great many things.” She tells him. “You did, even if you don’t believe it, you did. You don’t deserve all that you’ve been put through. This duty that’s been laid down on your shoulders - that’s the thing you did not deserve.”

He frowns. “If it wasn’t me - “

“I know what would happen if it wasn’t you!” She almost yells, her face cracking with tears hot and fast sliding down her face. Quietly, she adds, “I know, okay? I know.”

The silence is enough to suffocate them both. And then, in a quiet, broken whisper, “I don’t want to die.” He laughs then. “Isn’t that selfish? Cowardly? Even after all we’ve been through.”

“It’s not selfish, nor cowardly. It’s the most bravest thing to admit. Is it selfish or cowardly for me not wanting you to die?”

“That’s different,” He says, wiping away tears.

“You idiot,” She says, hand resting upon his cheek. “It’s not.”

And then they kiss like it’s the last time. But unlike the other times, this truly feels like it. Instead of the dread, there is now acceptance, and instead of the rage, there is now hollowness that resides within her.

She loves him in that night. Memorizes his each and every move, his every angle. All she has ever wanted, and all that is going away.

Their love had never passionate nor lust-filled. Instead, it had been binded by duty and trust and in a way, that is what made it strong. A stronger love. A more powerful love.

When he dies, Mikasa will live. She will live through the peace he fought so hard for and will visit lands that no one has ever dared to step foot in. She will look at the moon in different parts of the world and think of what it must look like up in the heavens.

She’ll look after Jean, if only for Armin’s sake. Perhaps for Sasha’s and Connie’s and everyone else who died in their fights, sakes. She will take him out to watch sunsets and try to understand the thing that had been between him and Armin, and in turn, she will try to make him understand the thing between her and Eren. Even if she doesn’t fully understand it herself.

In time, she knows she will come to understand it, so she doesn’t fret too much. Instead, she walks, one foot in front of the other, footsteps deep in mud under a July sun.

She remembers Eren in every breath she takes. Remembers him as the wind flows through her hair and when the storm rolls by. The emptiness never really goes away though, but that’s alright. Mikasa will learn to live with it, just as she has learned to live without walls.

Her red scarf still hangs around her neck. She doesn’t think she’ll ever let go.

 


End file.
